The real 'stolen generation' (letter)

by L.B. Loveday

News Weekly, March 15, 2008

Sir,

Prof. Peter Read's 100,000 "Stolen Generation" children may be a great overestimation (Canberra Observed, News Weekly, March 1); but the contemporary, mostly overlooked, stolen generation now numbers hundreds of thousands.

That is how many children have been effectively removed from, mainly, their fathers under Labor's Family Law Act, administered firstly by Elizabeth Evatt while Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, then by her successor, Alastair Nicholson, whose unfortunate childhood with a harsh father who sent him to boarding school where he adapted poorly seems to have embittered him against all fathers.

The Howard Government's family law amendments, especially Section 61DA(1) "When making a parenting order in relation to a child the court must apply a presumption that it is in the best interests of the child for the child's parents to have equal shared parental responsibility for the child", were meant to return fathers to their children's lives, but in practice are routinely circumvented because of tactical, false allegations of violence.

Children deprived of their fathers' love and guidance are over-represented in every negative social outcome; but not only are children still being "stolen" from their fathers, there is no intention to rectify past wrongs, which, in so many cases, is ongoing with the children not having reached adulthood.